Friday, April 04, 2014

Redeeming Holy Days from Pagan Lies-Easter 2-repost

They claim that it is pagan because the name Easter is from a pagan goddess.

They claim that Easter eggs are a symbol of pagan worship, particularly of that false goddess in number 1.

They claim that the Easter bunny is a pagan symbol, the consort of the pagan goddess in number 1.

All of these claims are false.

That's not to say that the materialism of modern culture hasn't obscured
the meaning of Easter through focusing on treats and bunnies. But even
though factual information about the tradition of eggs at easter is
plentiful, and even though the use of the hare/rabbit has long history
in Christian iconography the propaganda efforts of the anti-Easter crowd
and the pagans through all kinds of media has overcome the truth. And
the lies have found a firm footing in the social awareness of
contemporary society. Through venues like the History Channel, college
courses, and popular news media the lies have become accepted as
historical fact.

The Name of the Holy Day: Easter

As we have demonstrated in the previous article, the choosing of the
date for Easter had nothing to do with pagan practices. The original
dates chosen and the reasons for adjusting the methods of determining
those dates always had at the center determining when the Biblical
Passover should be observed so that the festival of the Resurrection
could be observed without discord.

While most languages adapt the word פסח Pesach "Passover" as the term
for Easter/Passover, German and English adopted the local month name.
The local month name was adopted very early, by the records it was
adopted while Rome was still active.

Alexander Hislop claimed:

What means the term Easter itself? It is not a Christian name. It bears
its Chaldean origin on its very forehead. Easter is nothing else than
Astarte, one of the titles of Beltis, the queen of heaven, whose name,
as pronounced by the people Nineveh, was evidently identical with that
now in common use in this country. That name, as found by Layard on the
Assyrian monuments, is Ishtar. The worship of Bel and Astarte was very
early introduced into Britain, along with the Druids, "the priests of
the groves." (The Two Babylons, Ch. 3, sec. 2)

Notice how clever the argument is? Sir Austen Henry Layard just
published his first works on Nineveh in 1848, 1849, and 1853. And
Hislop, who knew nothing about cuneiform or ancient Babylonian languages
concludes that since the Babylonian name "Ishtar" sounds like the
English word "Easter" they must be the same!

Just so that the argument can not be disproven, Hislop claims that the
Druids brought Ishtar to England. This is handy, because the Druids
didn't write anything down. And those records about Druids by others
don't record any such migrations or Ishtar worship.

Note for later: Ishtar's symbolic animals were the lion, and the
horse. The symbols of Astarte (a goddess of war) were the lion, the
horse, the dove, and the sphynx. And though the are considered
"fertility" gods today (instead of just pornography) there were no
bunnies or eggs among the symbols for these false gods.

But there is a possibility: Perhaps the word Easter does come from some pagan goddess.

Was There Actually a Pagan Goddess Easter, Eostre, Ostara?

A search of all the ancient literature left by the Germanic, Celtic,
English peoples and their ancestors combined with a search of all
ancient literature about those peoples by their contemporaries up to the
8th century A.D. turns up nothing.

There is nothing in any Edda, nothing in any history, nothing. And it is
not for lack of written records about the religious practices and
beliefs of those peoples through those years.

Note this date, the 8th century A.D. This is when the first mention of a
possible "goddess" is made. The date of the Easter festival had already
been long established. The use of the term Easter or Ostern (German)
had already been long established.

The first mention of such a goddess comes from the Venerable Bede in his 725 A.D. De Temporum Ratione. Bede wrote:

Eosturmonath has a name which is now translated
“Paschal month”, and which was once called after a goddess of theirs
named Eostre, in whose honour feasts were celebrated in that month.
Now they designate that Paschal season by her name, calling the joys of
the new rite by the time-honoured name of the old observance.[ Bede: The Reckoning of Time (Liverpool University Press - Translated Texts for Historians) by Faith Wallis (Apr 1, 1999) p. 54]

It would seem that Bede, who is listing out the English names of the
months in this chapter, confirms that there was a goddess named Eostre.
But neither Eostre nor a goddess he mentions in the previous sentence,
"Hrethra," are found in any other literature from either earlier nor
later.

It is not unlikely that Bede was conjecturing about the origin of the
names given that month names have been named after false gods in other
cultures; e.g., July, and August, named after Julius and Augustus upon
deification.

We will see a little later that there is another possibility, especially
considering that all of the other English month names were seasonal
descriptions or events during those times.

January=Giuli; Sun gets stronger

February=Sol-monath, Cake baking

March=Rhed-monath, Otherwise unknown goddess Hretha

April=Eostur-monath, Otherwise unknown goddess Eostra

May=Thrimylchi, Milk the cows three times a day Month

June=Lida, Gentle

July also=Lida, Gentle

August=Vueod-monath, Month the tares/grasses

September=Haleg-monath, Holy Month

October=Vuinter-fylleth; Winter starting with the full moon Month.

November=Blod-monath, Cattle slaughter month.

December=Giul; Sun gets stronger

Claims are often made by fake quotations from Einhard (c. 775 – March 14, 840) in his work Vita Karola Magni 817 to 833 AD.

Examples of fake quotations:

"Easter - *Ôstara) was a goddess in Germanic
paganism whose Germanic month has given its
name to the festival of Easter. Ôstarmânoth
is attested as the month-name equivalent to
'April' that was decreed by Charlemagne,
but as a goddess Eostre is attested only
by Bede in his 8th century work De temporum
ratione. Bede states that Ēosturmōnaþ
was the equivalent to the month of April,
and that feasts held in Eostre's honor...
replaced the "Paschal" observance of
Passover."
-- Einhard, Life of Charlemagne, §29.

"Some scholars have debated whether or not
Eostre is an invention of Bede's, and
theories Einhard, connecting Eostre with records of
Germanic Easter customs (including hares
rabbits and eggs)."
-- Einhard, Life of Charlemagne, §29.

Both quotes from easter-origins and are found repeated in dozens of websites.

Here is Einhard's section 29 on Charlemagne:

29. ReformsIt was after he had received the imperial name that, finding the laws of
his people very defective (the Franks have two sets of laws, very different in many
particulars), he determined to add what was wanting, to reconcile the discrepancies, and
to correct what was vicious and wrongly cited in them. However, he went no further in this
matter than to supplement the laws by a few capitularies, and those imperfect ones; but he
caused the unwritten laws of all the tribes that came under his rule to be compiled and
reduced to writing . He also had the old rude songs that celeate the deeds and wars of the
ancient kings written out for transmission to posterity. He began a grammar of his native
language. He gave the months names in his own tongue, in place of the Latin and barbarous
names by which they were formerly known among the Franks. He likewise designated the winds
by twelve appropriate names; there were hardly more than four distinctive ones in use
before. He called January, Wintarmanoth; February, Hornung; March, Lentzinmanoth; April,
Ostarmanoth; May, Winnemanoth; June, Brachmanoth; July, Heuvimanoth; August, Aranmanoth;
September, Witumanoth; October, Windumemanoth; Novemher, Herbistmanoth; December,
Heilagmanoth. He styled the winds as follows; Subsolanus, Ostroniwint; Eurus,
Ostsundroni-, Euroauster, Sundostroni; Auster, Sundroni; Austro-Africus, Sundwestroni;
Africus, Westsundroni; Zephyrus, Westroni; Caurus, Westnordroni; Circius, Nordwestroni;
Septentrio, Nordroni; Aquilo, Nordostroni; Vulturnus, Ostnordroni.[Life of Charlemagne -- Einhard's Life of Charlemagne, 19th century English translation by Samuel Epes Turner]

All Einhard says is that Charles the Great chose to keep the Germanic
month names. There is nothing here that speaks about a pagan goddess
named Ostara or Eostra.

There is one more name with the term Eostra in it from this general period. Eosterwine. (650 – 7 March 686) was the second Anglo-Saxon Abbot of Wearmouth in Northumbria (England).

Note that in none of these documents is there anything about who Eostra
might have been, what purpose she might have served, who her consorts
might have been. All the evidence shows us is that the old English had a
month with the name Eostra. It shows us that a well respected writer of
the church thought that the month name had pagan roots. But that name,
even if used for the feast of the Resurrection, was not chosen because
the Passover meal was pagan or polluted by paganism. It would be just
like non pagans today using the word Thursday for the name of a weekday.

No one heard any more about Eostra/Ostara for a thousand years.

It wasn't until 1835 when Jacob Grimm began publishing his work on Teutonic Mythology that the name Eostra as a goddess was noticed again.

Everything that we think we know about Eostra comes from Grimm. But notice how what Grimm says is conjecture:

We Germans to this day call April ostermonat, and ostarmanoth is found as early as Eginhart (temp. Car. Mag.).
The great Christian festival, which usually falls in April or the end
of March, bears in the oldest of OHG. remains the name ostara gen. -un ;1 it is mostly found in the plural, because two days (ostartagil, aostortaga, Diut. 1, 266a) were kept at Easter. This Ostara, like the AS. Eastre, must in the heathen religion have denoted
a higher being, whose worship was so firmly rooted, that the christian
teachers tolerated the name, and applied it to one of their own grandest
anniversaries.(Volume 1, p. 290 bold added)

After making what now would be rightly considered an illegitimate venture into etymology of the name Eostre, Grimm continues:

Ostara, Eostreseems therefore to have been the divinity of the radiant dawn, of upspringing light, a spectacle that brings joy and blessing, whose meaning could be
easily adapted to the resurrection-day of the Christian's God. Bonfires
were lighted at Easter, and according to a popular belief of long
standing, the moment the sun rises on Easter Sunday morning, he gives three joyful leaps,
he dances for joy (Superst. 813). Water drawn on the Easter morning is,
like that at Christmas, holy and healing (Superst. 775. 804) ; here
also heathen notions seems to have grafted themselves on great
Christian festivals. Maidens clothed in white, who at Easter, at the
season of returning spring, show themselves in clefts of the rock and on
mountains, are suggestive of the ancient goddess (see Suppl.). (ibid. 291 bold added)

Remember what Grimm is working with. He has only Bede and Einhard. Just like you and I have.

According to the second volume of his Teutonic Mythology, Grimm even
associates the Easter egg with Eostra. Though, we shall see, that
particularly Christian tradition predates any mention of Eostra by 500
years. Grimm wrote:

But if we admit, goddesses, then, in addition to Nerthus, Ostara
has the strongest claim to consideration. To what we said on p. 290 I
can add some significant facts. The heathen Easter had much in common
with May-feast and the reception of spring, particularly in matter of
bonfires. Then, through long ages there seem to have lingered among the
people Easter-games so-called, which the church itself had to tolerate : I allude especially to the custom of Easter eggs, and to the Easter tale which preachers told from the pulpit for the people's amusement, connecting it with Christian reminiscences.(Volume 2, p. 780 bold added)

Again, notice the conjectural language, but also the confidence he seems to have about his notions.

Everything else about this so called "ancient" goddess Eostra/Ostara has
been made up since the late 1800s. And it has been made up out of
nothing.

Recently a historian has offered another suggestion. In his article Ostern. Geschichte eines Wortes [D. H. Green The Modern Language Review Vol. 96, No. 1 (Jan., 2001), pp. 247-249] Jürgen Udolph suggested that by exampled usages and historical linguistics believes that the goddess names
Ostara and Eostre are false conclusions. Rather Udolph traces "Ostern / Easter" from a
Nordic root ausa "to pour water," which was proposed by Siegfried
Gutenbrunner in 1966. In this way both the linguistic form of the word
in Bede and Einhard along with the name Eostrewine can be maintained,
the listing of seasons and seasonal tasks is maintained in Bede, there
is no need to create a potential mythology. The implication is that the
word Easter would actually etymologically derived from the main baptism
service during
Easter night.

Before all Sacramental Christians get excited about this article, we
need to remember that it too is an historical conjecture. But this
conjecture seems to address the evidence as evidence and requires not
fanciful and imaginative mythology to be created in support of it.

The neo-pagans and wiccans have made up all kinds of claims that the
Easter holiday had to do with fertility and reproduction. They claim
that Ashtorah was a reproductive goddess. There is no evidence in the
Bible that the asherah poles and other references to Ashera or Ashtorah
had anything to do with fertility. And there is nothing that links the
Ashtorah of the Bible with the old Babylonian goddess Ishtar.

Some modern archaeologists who try to show the evolution of religions in
the middle-east have conjectured that ancient Ugaritic goddess named
Athirat might be linked to the Bible’s Ashtorah even though many
Ugaritic documents say otherwise. A few of these scholars also
conjectured that this Ugaritic goddess might be the equivalent of
Babylon’s Ishtar, but this is only conjecture.

So where are we with real history for “Easter”?

The word Easter comes either from the old Anglo-Saxon word meaning “to
shine”-possibly to describe the months of the year when the sun began to
get brighter and higher during the day. Or it may come from the word "to
baptize" indicating the Baptisms which took place on Easter. In 1525
William Tyndale used the Middle-English
word “ester” = “Easter” as a translation for Passover and the day of
Christ’s Resurrection. The word had already been long used and
understood as referring to the day of Christ’s Resurrection when Tyndale
made his translation.

Despite what modern pagans and wiccans wish the
past might have been, there were no known pagan or wiccan celebrations
of a pagan-easter in England or northern Europe in the period from the
Middle Ages through the Reformation and up to the late 1800s.

So there are two modern myths that we have debunked: first, it is not
true that the name of Easter came from the worship of a pagan spring
goddess; second, it is not true that the Easter celebration was a
celebration of fertility and reproduction.

Easter Eggs

Where did the Easter Egg come from?

There are several traditions which converge to bring us the Easter egg.
And there is some modern nonsense that really has nothing to do with the
use of eggs at Easter.

First, there is a sculpture on the Persepolis
of ancient Iran of a line of people bearing gifts on the New Year day
celebration on the Sping equinox. One of the many different gifts
carried by the people in this sculpture appears to be an egg. This was
carved by the old pagan Zoroastrians from ancient Persia (modern Iran).

From this sculpture modern pagans have conjectured that Christians stole
the idea of using eggs at easter from the ancient Zoroastrians. The
problem is that none of the writers in the ancient Christian church
mention this tradition where they came into contact with Zoroastrians.

Still, the modern neo-pagans and wiccans assert that the egg is an
ancient sign of fertility. That seems as bright a claim as saying that
water is wet.

Of the traditions that actually do contribute to Christianity using eggs in the Easter celebration there are three to consider.

First: In the celebration of the Passover meal, which Christ celebrated
the night before He was crucified, a roasted whole egg is placed as one
of six food items on the Passover plate. The egg, called Beitzah
symbolizes the Passover sacrifice that was offered in the Temple in Jerusalem
and was then eaten as part of the meal on Seder night. The egg was
introduced to the Passover meal after the Temple was destroyed in 70
A.D. The egg was the first dish served at Jewish funerals in the time of
Christ’s ministry on earth. The egg was also used as a symbol of
mourning the loss of the Temple where the Passover Lamb was sacrificed.
It is usually eaten dipped in salt water which symbolizes the bitter
tears of the people.

Early Christians in the first and second century continued to celebrate
the Passover along with the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Primarily the
Passover was celebrated because of Christ’s institution of the Lord’s
Supper.

Second: the season preceding Easter is called Lent. The season of Lent
is a fast. In both the eastern and western Church this meant fasting
from meat and bird flesh--including eggs. Eggs were used to break the Lenten
fast on Easter Morning. In preparation for this breaking of the fast
the eggs were decorated to commemorate the sacrifice of Jesus Christ as
the Paschal Lamb of God Who takes away the sins of the world. The
breaking of the shell became a symbol of Christ’s rending of the tomb.

Indeed, the use of decorated eggs to celebrate Christ’s resurrection on
Easter morning is so widespread across the world and so closely tied
with the spread of Christianity that one cannot call it anything but a
Christian tradition. But that doesn’t keep the neo-pagans and modern
commentators from trying to claim that Christian’s “stole” this
so-called “pagan” tradition.

So we turn to the third tradition:

The Easter Hare

The typical image used to demonstrate that that the Easter Bunny was the consort of Ostara/Eostra is this:

As we have seen above, Ostara/Eostra didn't really exist. And since she
didn't exist she couldn't have had a bunny as a consort. But where do
they get this ancient looking, archaeological type statue of Ostara and
the Rabbit?

The problem with the image is that it is of a Mayan goddess (Guatemalen Ixchel). This false goddess can only be dated back to the 1600s A.D. Wrong continent. Wrong hemisphere. Wrong epoch.

All those websites, videos, and well meaning people who try to argue
that Easter is pagan and use this picture to do so have a basic problem
with honesty.

There is an interesting doubling up of the Easter bunny with the
fictional goddess Ostara. The modern ‘histories” of Easter tend to claim
1) that Easter was originally a pagan fertility holiday 2) of devotion
to the goddess Ostara (Eastre, however spelled), 3) she used eggs as a
symbol of fertility, and 4) she always carried a pet bunny because it
was so fertile. Now, all of these 4 claims are fiction.

So where did the bunny really come from?

According to Karl Joseph Simrok’s 1855 book called Handbuch Der
Deutschen Mythologie Mit Einschluss Der Nordischen, “The rabbit is a
pagan symbol and has always been an emblem of fertility.” (page 551) The
old 1911 Catholic Encyclopedia cites this as proof that Christians
cannot use the rabbit in celebration of Easter. But I cannot find this
sentence in my copy of Simrok’s book. Perhaps mine is a different
edition.

What is interesting about the rabbit or hare is that it has been used by
all kinds of religions around the world as a symbol. Each religion
fitting its own teaching on the symbol of the rabbit. But in most cases
the symbol refers to new life. In the ancient eastern Church the rabbit
was used on tombstones and as a symbol of Christ. One author points out
that some early Christians viewed the rabbit’s hole as a symbol of the
tomb of Christ.
Probably the most complete and systematic study to date is actually Birgit Gehrisch's Lepusculus Domini, Erotic Hare, Meister Lampe" Zur Rolle des Hasen in der Kulturgeschichte, Inaugural-Dissertaion zur Erlangun, VVB Laufersweiler Verlag, Wettenberg, Germany, 2005.

Christian art has several examples from the early times through the
renaissance of rabbits as a symbol of Christ.

To name just a few The
three hare window
in Paderborn, Germany and also in the monastery Muottatal in
Switzerland, where three rabbits are together in a triangle with only
one ear each showing, symbolizing the Trinity,

There are actually dozens of examples like this one above scattered all across Europe and Asia.

Martin Schongauer’s 1470 engraving The Temptation of Jesus has three by three rabbits at the feet of Jesus Christ.

His student Albrecht Dürer's
woodcut of 1497 The Holy Family with the Three Hares showing two hares
next to each other and the other going down toward a hole with a stone
rolled next to it;

Hans Baldung Grien 1512-1516 painted the altar for the Freiburg Cathedral
with the second panel representing Mary’s Visitation to Elizabeth where
he painted the rabbits about the feet of Mary and Elizabeth;

Titan’s Madonna and Child with St. Catherine and a Rabbit which was
painted in 1530.

I picked these works of art because they are all pre-Reformation. They
demonstrate that the rabbit or hare was used a symbol of Christ and the
Resurrection before the time of the Reformation.

America owes the use of the Easter Bunny to the Pennsylvania Deutch
settlers who came from Alsace, a German and French area on the border
between the two countries. Back in 1678 Georg Franck von Frankenau
in 1682 wrote against the excessive eating of Easter eggs which parents
would leave in the name of the Easter Hare--the Resurrected Christ. The
people from this region settled in Pennsylvania and brought with them
their symbolism and traditions surrounding the hare representing Christ,
the egg representing the tomb, and Christ’s resurrection with the
giving and breaking of eggs when the fast of Lent was ended on Easter
Sunday.

Summary

Yes, Easter, the eggs, the bunny, all of them are still being perverted
into something else by our own society. The devil, the world, and our
own flesh don’t want to hear about Christ’s resurrection and will attack
any symbols used to teach the resurrection.

But now you know enough of the real history of Easter and the symbols used by the Christian Church to celebrate this holiday.